A Change In Happenstance
by StarOfTime
Summary: AU. What if, on the day he met Harry, Leo Hurst took a different path through the Alleys. As a result, Harry and Leo don't meet until much later. What can happen in the time between when they should have met and when they do meet? Quite a lot, when you're Harriet Potter.
1. A Change In Fate

Okay, this might be slightly gruesome at the beginning, but please, follow on with me. This is a what-if au of the murkybluematter's Harry Potter series. The what-if? What if Leo had taken a different route the day he met Harry and not been there to save Harry from the guy who might have only been trying for a kidney.

Disclaimer: Please be reminded that anything you recognise from either Violet's Series or the original series do not belong to me.

* * *

Harry made her way slowly down Knockturn Alley with her three crates balanced steadily before her. The extra crate made it a little hard for her to see ahead of her, but by walking slowly in the middle of the alley, she was visible enough that the other witches and wizards saw her coming and skirted around her. She was almost past Borgin and Burke's when trouble came, not from before her, but behind.

A dirty hand grasped her right bicep harshly and yanked her sideways into the shadow of a building's overhang. Harry gasped and hauled her weight against the movement, tilting the weight of the crates to the left as well to help counter-balance her accoster's pulling. The man who'd stopped her just pulled harder and brought another hand up to fist in her robe collar and keep her from twisting away. The potion crates were dislodged and fell to the alley floor with a dull thud that didn't stop anyone else in Knockturn from ignoring the situation that Harry was rapidly finding herself in. With her hands now free, she struck out at the man and tried to push him away from her. She could see him clearly now. His hair was as long as any pureblood's, but Ratty and crusted with something that flaked. He was broad-shouldered and slightly overweight, with hands like meat hammers and eyes half-lidded with a violent disorientation, making her think he'd been drinking. When his grip on her collar and arm proved too strong, Harry lashed out with her feet, using the guy's hold on her to keep her upright as she pushed of the ground and kicked him with both feet as hard as she could. Her right leg was a little high from being turned more towards her attacker, but her left foot got him square in the groin.

The man doubled over, clutching himself, his mangy hair falling into his face and his grip slackening instantly, releasing. Harry thrust herself away from him and backed quickly towards where the crates had fallen. She reached for them hurriedly, thanking Merlin for the foam packaging that would have, she hoped, prevented any breakage from occurring. She got the crates stacked, but before she could pick them up, a hand clawed at her nape, jerking her off her knees and up, until she was dangling with her toes just scraping the earth in front of her very pissed off attacker. His dark hair swung forward into her face and she could see every rip in his tattered black robes. His breath was foul with something sickly sweet and his teeth winked at her like yellow stars from behind the heavy, greying beard around his mouth.

"You'll pay for that one, brat," He wheezed into her face, "I'm gonna-"

But whatever he was going to do, Harry never found out. Reaching up, she clasped her hands around his exposed forearm and asked her magic to make the drunkard let her go. She'd felt the rush as her magic flowed out of her; had felt her palms tingle and then the man and screamed and dropped her, holding his arm to his chest and cursing in language that was, from what she could hear, rather foul. And she could see why, his arm was a blistered, bloody, mess where she'd grabbed him. It wasn't bleeding, because whatever her magic had done had cauterized the man's wound; but it still didn't look pretty. Feeling guilty despite herself, Harry was about to ask if he needed help, when he lashed out at her, eyes blown wide with pain and anger. He didn't get within another foot of her. Responding to her racing heart her magic lashed out at the cretin, sending him into the wall with a crack and cushioning the ground when she fell from the force of it leaving her.

Looking up, Harry went a little green at the sight of the man who quite clearly had some broken limbs, he was breathing though, so he probably wasn't too injured. Swallowing hard, Harry picked the crates up, about to continue towards Diagon Alley and stopped. She couldn't just leave him like that, no matter what he'd tried to do to her. Especially not if someone found out Harry Potter, the girl studying to be a _Healer_ , had left an injured person on the street.

Setting the crates down once more, Harry pulled her emergency potions bag from her pocket and paused a moment, looking at it. She had the bag because you never knew when you might need a potion to be applied immediately, although most of the potions she had on hand weren't generally what you would use, for someone inflicted of a grievous injury, but a few of the things she had would definitely help. Rolling her sleeves up, Harry cast a stunning spell at the man for good measure and settled in to do what she could for him.

* * *

When Thomas Clunk woke from his magically induced unconsciousness, he took a moment to remember what, exactly, had happened to land him in his current position.

He had been drinking after a failed business deal, his client having said the supplied ingredients weren't fresh enough, and started staggering home after being evicted from the drinking establishment. He had been angry about it and while resting under the shadowed eaves of Knockturn Alley, had seen someone carrying an armload of crates. From the angle he saw them at as they passed him by, he had been utterly convinced that they were the rotten client that had cost him a payload; ignoring the fact that they were far too short and slight to be so.

And so he had grabbed at the passerby, hauling them out of the too-bright daylight, with the misguided intention of providing them with 'fresh ingredients', vision blurred by the alcohol within his system. They had immediately tried pulling away from him, but the angered man had just pulled harder, using his other hand to obtain an even tighter grip on them. And then the little shit had gotten his feet up and kicked him hard in the groin and hip bone. Thomas had doubled over; losing his grip and the kid had scrambled away from him, stacking the crates up.

But Thomas wasn't having that. Charging after him, he raked his hand over the brat's neck, clasping hair in his fist and yanking up, hoisting the stupid child high enough that their toes were barely on the ground. He was about to inform them of exactly what he was planning on doing to them when hands had reached up and brilliant green eyes had flared with power and searing, gut-wrenchingly terrible pain invaded him. He had pulled his arm to his chest in a futile bid to stop the burning and then he had just snapped, howling and going for the tiny figure. The last thing he remembered was hitting the wall and blacking out to the pain of his bones cracking.

Looking at his burnt arm, he blinked at finding linen bandages neatly wrapped around it and various other wounds neatly doctored. Even his robes were fixed, tattered tears smoothed away by careful magic. And he didn't know who had done it. Looking back, the person he had tried to kill was clearly not his reneging client, but rather a child, not much older than ten years of age. As he pushed himself to his feet, mindful of his broken bones and tender arm; whether it hurt at this moment or not, cracked ribs were no joke, he saw a piece of parchment stuck to the linen and a vial full of potion under an extra wrap.

 _This vial contains one dose of Pain Reliever to be taken at such a time as the previously administered dose wears off._

 _And trust me when I say you will know when it has._

* * *

When Harry finally reached Diagon Alley, she had looked at the entrance to Knockturn for a moment before going on to the Leaky Cauldron, stopping only once to obtain a certain item, before continuing onwards, with a dreadful, creeping feeling in her heart. If she was going to continue as a brewer in Knockturn, she would need to learn to better defend herself. On the plus side, though, she had come up with a way to make carrying all the crates easier.


	2. A Change In View

So Warnings! there are descriptions of Blood and some gore in this. It is mild... ish, so be careful. And here is chapter two

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As Harry entered her Lab, crates in arm, she had a great many thoughts stirring themselves around her psyche. Just half an hour previously, Harry had been at the mercy of a pissed off drunkard, and then the tables had turned on them. In a fraction of a second, Harry's magic had seared the flesh from a man's bones, (although it really didn't reach the bone, just burnt him severely... which she was really trying not to think about), leaving it an unsightly and excruciatingly painful mess. Admittedly, it had accomplished the task she set it, but... it had been so violent. And the way her magic had lashed out at him when he tried to get her a third time...

It was terrifying. It had been in self defence, yes, and she hadn't killed him, but she had left him with an arm that would have been horribly scarred if she hadn't used Dittany on it, and three cracked ribs, with a further two actually broken. And then, instead of just leaving him there to awake in agony, like a far too great a percentage of people would do... she had healed him. She had healed him as best she could and fixed his robes with overpowered cleaning and mending charms, and left behind a second dose of pain reliever, because she felt rather guilty about hurting him in the first place.

She would, Harry decided, brew extra healing potions to flesh out her repertoire. It would be good to have them anyway, in case of emergencies or further disputes. Then, as she settled in to brew the rest of the potions on Krait's list, Harry carefully focused on the unfamiliar recipes and put the thought of her magic and its behaviour in a box, locked within the lab in her mind, to be examined when she had completed her brewing.

Later that night, after settling into bed, Harry closed her eyes and retreated to her mindscape. She needed to deal with this now, before anything else happened. Opening her inner eyes, Harry strode swiftly through the illusionary gate and into the potions lab at the base of her mountain. Stopping in front of a box on one of the bookcases, she eyed the storm it depicted with trepidation. She had to deal with this. She couldn't let it wait around any longer, because next time, (and Harry was sure that there would be a next time, given Knockturn Alley's reputation; it wasn't all just hearsay, her parents had warned her away from it for a reason), her magic might injure whoever grabbed her in a way that couldn't be healed. It could leave them permanently crippled, for life and it was a possibility that Harry was terrified of. And yet she hesitated as she reached for the box.

The crux of the matter, Harry knew, was that she needed to be able to trust her magic. It was her magic that allowed her to do potions, after all. However she also knew that she did trust her magic... She trusted it to protect her when it believed she was in danger. When Lee had tried to hurt her hands and destroy her ability to brew potions, her magic had lashed out and slammed him into the wall hard enough to knock him unconscious and bruise him greatly. This afternoon, it had done the same thing, breaking the ribs of a fully grown adult male with the amount of force it had used; and his arm... She had asked it her magic to make him let go, and it had burnt him, searing the skin and leaving behind the most horrible smell of burning flesh. And she hadn't even noticed the smell of it until she was tending his wounds; wounds she had inflicted with her magic, which brought her to another thing she hadn't noticed.

The man's blood had _stained her hands_. It had dried there, clinging to her skin along with scraps of charred flesh. Harry had dropped her wand at this discovery, horrified. The only thought that ran through her mind at that moment was to _get it off get itoffgetitoff_ _ **getitoffofme!**_ And it had disappeared, but Harry hadn't noticed, the image of it burned deep into her brain, even as she mindlessly cast cleaning charm after wandless cleaning charm.

She'd only noticed when she realised how lightheaded she felt and that she was hyperventilating. Forcing herself to calm down and breathe properly had taken a few minutes, at which time she noticed the remarkably clean state of the street in her immediate vicinity. And then how clean the man now was as well. Harry had taken one more, deep, shaky breath and picked her wand up and pulled burn paste from her potions kit, bandages not far behind. She'd mended his robes with a rather over powered Reparo, because to her still, slightly shaky mind, it seemed a pity his robes were so clean, but still tattered. Maybe Pansy was wearing off on her...?

Swallowing back bile as she remembered _The Incident_ , Harry blinked back the hot, prickling feeling behind her physical eyes and reached decidedly for the box in front of her, carrying it with her into her Space Room.

Floating towards her magical core, Harry took a deep breath and then exhaled. She needed to do this, it was her magic and she was in charge of it! With a wave of her hand, the box floating next to the Heiress opened and thin, glowing streams of though drifted from beneath the lid, curling and coiling in invisible currents. With a brush of her fingers, Harry's thoughts resolved into memories. And she spoke memories playing behind her to really try and illustrate the point she was making.

"This has gone on long enough." Harry's core pulsed gently in response to her voice, the ropey lines of snake-like fire shifting, like the tilt of a head, effectively communicating ' _Curiosity'_ to its human.

Harry swallowed and called forth memories as she spoke.

"It has to stop. You have to stop acting against or beyond my orders when I give them and not act without my permission. When I was attacked by Lee Jordan, you flung him against a wall, and that was good, that you stopped him, but you also hurt him. And today... you did what I asked and that was brilliant, but you did it in a way that I cannot tolerate. You burnt him so badly that I had to use a quarter of a bottle of Dittany healing him."

Harry grit her mental eyes against the memory of the blood on her hands. It had been horrible and gut wrenching and how the sight of it had made her feel inside... she had no word to effectively describe it.

And then she had healed him.

And healing him after seeing his blood on her hands... that had shown her something. It had given her a taste of how Archie must feel and why he was so intent on learning Healing; because Harry knew now that the ability to heal people was important; so, so, very important. It was important because Harry never wanted to have someone's blood on her hands like that again, and the ability to heal was the best way to stop that.

"You are my magic. You aid me and comfort me and protect me when I need protecting, but you need to stop acting without order. You and I have always been together and we always will be, until the day I die and maybe beyond that. We're stuck with each other and that means we need to be able to trust each other." Harry took a deep breath before speaking again. "That means I have to be able to trust you to answer when I call you and work with me, without acting out and behaving smoothly. And It also means that you have to trust me to defend myself and make the right calls, whether I call on you for help or not."

Raising her head from where it had become bowed, she stared at her core, eyes blazing with emerald fire.

"You are my magic and I refuse to be afraid of you! You are mine and you are not the one who is in control! I am the one who is in control!"

All at once, Harry's core blazed up with brilliant light, blinding in its intensity, and Harry's hand splayed forwards, cutting through the magic sharply. Pressing forwards, she reached her core and plunged her arms deep inside it, determined to make her magic listen to her.

And in that one moment, time stood still.

Then there was light and sound and touch and taste and smell and Harry was drawn into a whirlpool of memories.

* * *

When her eyes cleared, the first thing Harry saw was a baby held within its mother's arms. The woman was whispering to her child and Harry could sense the love she felt for the little newborn. And then Harry had felt the mother's wishing and Something within the woman reacted. And it was familiar, Harry knew this Something! Harry remembered the Something from Before, in the _warmsoftdarkness_ and started to reach for it, but then the baby's eyes were filled up with Love's Something. Harry frowned, in as much as Harry could frown. That wasn't right. Baby was _Harry's_ and Something that was not Harry shouldn't fill Baby's eyes. So Harry _pushed_ the Something that belonged to Love out and filled Baby's eyes with Harry instead.

* * *

Baby is not Baby and Harry is not Harry, Not-Harry discovers. Baby is Harry and Harry is Magic.

* * *

Magic watches Harry play with Brother and Not-Named, gentle nudges making sure she isn't hurt. Harry is _Laughing_ and _Happy_ and then Harry asks and the _meanrudenasty_ that made their Harry cry is _burning_ and Brother and Not-Named look at Harry with _Fear_ making their eyes wide and Harry is _scared_. Magic wants Harry to be _NotScaredHappy_ and makes Brother and Not-Named forget being Afraid of Harry and why, but instead of making Harry _NotScaredHappy_ , Harry is _more_ scared. Harry is scared of Magic and then Harry is shutting Magic out, locking them away inside Harry where they can't help Harry be Safe and Happy.

Magic is _scared_ for Harry.

* * *

Harry has let Magic out, where Magic can help Harry be Safe and Happy, but Harry has only let them out a little bit. Magic is still happy to _Help_ Harry.

* * *

Harry has found Wand. Wand _Loves_ Harry just like Magic does and agrees to help keep Harry and Magic _Safe_ and _Happy_. Magic _likes_ Wand.

* * *

Harry meets Dragon and Flower. Magic _likes_ Dragon and Flower. Dragon and Flower make Harry Happy.

* * *

Magic _Loves_ Harry and _**Hates**_ Enemy for hurting Harry and making Magic's Harry so very scared of him. Magic makes Enemy go away.

* * *

Harry asks Magic to make Danger let go of Harry and Magic burns Dangers arm away from Harry. When Danger tries to grab Magic's Harry a third time, Magic flings Danger against the wall, like it did to Enemy, who they _**Hate**_.

* * *

Harry is _Upset_ with Magic for hurting Danger and Magic doesn't _Understand_ _Why._ Harry knows that Magic just wants to Protect Harry, but Harry wants Magic to _Trust_ Harry to be In Control and to _Know_ that Harry will _Trust_ Magic to Support Harry and let Harry be In Control.

Harry _Shouts_ that Harry is _Not Afraid_ of Magic and Magic is _Scared_. Magic does not want Harry to _Shut_ Them _Out_ again. So Magic _Shows_ Harry that Magic _Loves_ Harry and will do _Their_ _Best_ for Harry; because Magic _Loves_ Harry and Harry is _**Theirs**_.

* * *

Harry gasps both physically and mentally as she drops out of the confusion of memories that belong, not to her, but to her _magic_. And then Harry realises she is crying. Tears are streaming down her face and she is taking great, sobbing, heaving breaths, gasping out apologies between the tears and sinking into her magic, feeling it surround her in a warm, loving, joyful embrace, because she _understands_ and she whispers out a final sentence before she slips away from the land of consciousness and into that realm of deep, exhausted sleep, the kind that only comes after you cry and cry and cry again.

"I will never shut you out again. I promise."

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so this chapter was hard to write. It fought and fought until I managed was suddenly inspired. I was going to write more, but I really wanted to post on my birthday, (I'm now 21!), so here it is. I would greatly appreciate hearing what you guys all think. be warned, Flames will be used to help Harry brew Felix Felicis.


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